Jazz++!

MuseScore is a free music notation and composition software available for Linux, Windows and Mac.

With TuxGuitar, you will be able to compose music using the following features

Guitar Pro is first and foremost a program designed to edit tablatures for guitar, bass, and other fretted instruments from 4 to 8 strings.

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving. One of LilyPonds major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand. It uses a simple text notation for music input, which LilyPond interprets and processes in a series of stages. In the final stage, music notation is output to PDF (via PostScript) or other graphical formats, such as SVG or PNG. LilyPond also has the facility to generate MIDI files that correspond to the music notation output. »

Frescobaldi is a LilyPond sheet music text editor. It aims to be powerful, yet lightweight and easy to use. Frescobaldi is Free Software, freely available under the General Public License.

GNU Denemo is a music notation editor that lets you rapidly enter notation for typesetting via the LilyPond music engraver. You can compose, transcribe, arrange, listen to the music and much more.

Music21 is a Python-based toolkit for computer-aided musicology.Applications of this toolkit include computational musicology, music informations, musical example extraction and generation, music notation editing and scripting, and a wide variety of approaches to composition, both algorithmic and directly specified.

Impro-Visor (short for “Improvisation Advisor”) is a music notation program designed to help jazz musicians compose and hear solos similar to ones that might be improvised. The objective is to improve understanding of solo construction and tune chord changes. There are other, secondary, things it can do, such as improvise on its own. It has also been used for transcription. Because rhythm-section (e.g. piano, bass, drums) accompaniment is automatically generated from chords, Impro-Visor can be used as a play-along device. Now having a wider array of accompaniment styles, its use is not limited to jazz. »

ABCJ is a pure-Java editor, player and librarian for music files stored using Chris Walshaw's ABC notation.

EasyABC allows you to edit and play abc files. It supports conversion from MusicXML and MIDI to ABC. The latter uses a custom implementation (midi2abc is not used) in order to produce very readable ABC output. Direct midi input is supported for people with a midi keyboard. It uses abcm2ps for printing music and abc2midi for playing it.

NtEd is a GTK+ score editor. It intends to be really WYSIWYG: what you see on the screen is exactly what you get on printer output. It supports up to 4 voices per staff, drum notes, 5 lyrics lines, N-Tuplets, context changes, repeats with alternatives, configurable music instruments per staff, MIDI / MusicXML import, PS / PDF / SVG / PNG / Lilypond / MIDI export. Scores can be played through the ALSA sequencer.

Power Tab Editor is a free tablature authoring tool created by Brad Larsen for Windows. It is used to create guitar, bass and ukulele tablature scores, among many others. The current version uses the *.ptb file format.The Power Tab Editor is able to import MIDI tracks, and can export to ASCII Text, HTML, and MIDI formats. In addition, individual sections may be exported as bitmap files.The program allows for tablature scores to be created alongside standard musical notation. The software achieves this through the input of tablature.Each Power Tab file contains two scores: guitar and bass. Only one score needs to be used for a Power Tab file. For proper playback, it is required that the time signatures and tempo markers be consistent between the two scores.The latest version was released in 2000. In 2006, the author released an open-source wxWidgets based program named the PT Parser. This code contains useful information for developers who want to write software that can convert, view, play, or edit Power Tab (.ptb) files. The PT Parser project is hosted at Google Code. »

MC Musiceditor is free/open source (GPLv2) music notation software (Windows). It has been developed with only one purpose: to make life of musicians easier when making scores. This results in a userfriendly editor which makes professional scores without requiring specific knowledge (other than musical basics)! In short: MC Musiceditor is the easiest way to write, refine, hear and print professional scores.

Midi Sheet Music is a free program that plays MIDI music files while highlighting the piano notes and sheet music notes.

NoteWorthy Composer is a graphical score editor intended for the creation of sheet music, but it can also import and export MIDI and Karaoke files and can export graphical WMFs. The user interface works either from the keyboard or the mouse. Visual results are immediate, and audible results can be heard at any time. Notes can also be entered by playing on a MIDI device, when configured. In version 2, the notes can be heard as they are entered. A feature of the user interface is that notation is displayed during editing. Each staff proceeds linearly from left to right, without being wrapped to the screen. Staff systems are visually broken to fit margins during page layout, allowing many possibilities at "print time", so solo instrument or full conductor can be produced with the same file. Many users prefer this editor layout over the so-called WYSIWYG editors because slowdowns in note entry, as the composition becomes larger, are much less dramatic than in WYSIWYG editors. Print preview is available for adjustments to page layout. »